Minga on the terrains of the Guagalá Association.
Source: Rodríguez-de-Francisco, 2010.
Based on: Rodríguez-de-Francisco, J.C., Boelens, R., under revision. Payment for environmental services and power in the Chamachán watershed, Ecuador. Human Organization.
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5.1. Introduction
Proponents of PES explain the need to introduce PES as they promise to be more efficient and effective than traditional command-and-control strategies to conservation (Pagiola et al., 2005). Its recurrence in state policies and development intervention discourse is explained by its appeal in generating environmental protection while simultaneously reducing poverty (Pagiola 2007). PES appeal is also built upon its relative autonomy from bureaucratic administration and public spending, fitting neatly into the principles and claims of dominant (neo)liberal policy approaches. This pricing of nature’s resources and services, assigning and re-assigning property rights to them, and trading these goods and services as commodities (Liverman, 2004:734) is then positioned as the ideal way to make resource-use efficient and reduce environmental degradation.
The fierce promotion of PES rationality and project implementation is counteracted by substantial case research and examination of policy discourse. Based on theoretical bodies that critically scrutinize the basic foundations and postulates of neoliberalism in relation to vulnerable population groups (Baud, 2007; Foucault, 2008; Harvey, 2005; Klein, 2007; van der Ploeg, 2007) and processes of neoliberalising nature (e.g., Bakker, 2010; Budds, 2009; Büscher et al., 2012; Fletcher, 2010; occurrence of ‘green grabbing’ (Vidal, 2008) whereby green credentials are wielded to justify seizing community land and water resources (Fairhead et al., 2012).
Some of these studies examine watershed PES schemes. While these schemes are implemented at the watershed or catchment scale, design and negotiation occur at multi-scalar levels; for instance, connecting local service providers with private, government and non-governmental actors operating at national/global levels (Rosa et al., 2003). Their heterogeneity in terms of economic, political and cultural backgrounds triggers a dynamic power play in PES implementation processes. Several of these
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studies have considered power structures and tactics in relation to conservation projects (Kosoy et al., 2008; Kosoy et al., 2007). Some have focused on the exclusionary results of conservation project strategies (Lee and Mahanty, 2007). Others have examined the inclusionary politics and discursive practices of conservation schemes, integrating (or ‘adversely incorporating’) local producers in a commoditised natural resource management environment (Milne and Adams, 2012). These analyses have contributed to understanding how power dynamics are not just ‘external’
to communities and their power-heterogeneous members, but in capillary ways profoundly intervene in, and entwine within, community realities.
Several of these case studies feature environmental conflict and power imbalances among agents involved in PES, from global to local levels;
they manifest problematic impacts by PES on environmental communities.
The studies done so far highlight that there is a need for critical analysis and better understanding of contextual power dynamics and historical struggles over natural resources among groups of stakeholders who provide and demand environmental services, as a necessary step to more thoroughly comprehend possible PES project impacts.
This chapter uses the power cube (Gaventa, 2006) as a framework for analysing how power dynamics played out around a PES project in the Chamachán watershed, in the northern Andean highlands of Ecuador. This project is a neighbouring scheme of the Nueva América PES project analysed in the previous chapter. It aims to conserve the ecosystems inhabited mostly by indigenous communities that provide drinking and irrigation water to several water users in the municipality of Pimampiro.
The PES scheme was proposed and financed by municipal and provincial governments and by foreign aid support.
This chapter examines historical struggles over natural resources with respect to PES decision-making arenas as ‘visible’, ‘invisible’ and ‘hidden’
power. It first briefly outlines the power analytical framework used to examine the Chamachán PES project in Ecuador. Thereafter, it introduces the methods used to gather and analyse information on the case study.
Next, a historical description of the natural resource conflict is presented in order to understand the context in which PES was introduced.
Subsequently, the chapter examines the implementation process of the scheme. Finally, findings and conclusions are presented.
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5.2. Multiple forms, spaces and levels of power: conceptual notes By placing ecological distribution and management issues exclusively in the realm of nature, natural resource management strategies and policies are naturalised and the policy debate becomes depoliticised and decontextualised – largely devoid of considerations regarding power relations, politics and culture. Ecological distribution issues, however, are intrinsically mediated by power dynamics determining access to, and control over, natural resources (Martínez-Alier, 2002). 50
Figure 5-1 The power cube Source: Gaventa (2006)
In general terms, as the introductory chapter of this thesis briefly has outlined, power is a relational means inducing the capacity or potentiality to make or to receive change, or to resist it (Foucault, 1977, 1980; Lukes, 2005). Power, according to Lukes (2005), is defined in three different forms. The first form, visible power, focuses on how conflict between interests is dealt with in public spaces, through observable decision-making, as revealed in the political arena by the formal rules, institutions
50 See also Bebbington et al., 2010; Bury, 2008; McCarthy and Prudham, 2004
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and authorities that are mobilised by political actor groups. Here, power consists of relatively ‘openly’ mobilising the means to defeat opponents’
preferences (Gaventa, 2006; Lorenzi, 2006), e.g., by bringing economic and political resources such as votes, jobs, influence, etc., to the bargaining game, and strategically positioning these resources through, among others, personal efficacy, political experience, and organizational strength (Gaventa, 1980:15). 2006). This is called hidden power, and is used by:
... vested interests to maintain their power and privilege by creating barriers to participation, by excluding key issues from the public arena, or by controlling politics ‘backstage’. They may occur not only within political processes, but in organizational and other group contexts as well, such as workplaces, NGOs or community-based organizations (IDS, 2010:11).
Here, power involves decision-making in political arenas, “but also non-decisions: decisions that result in suppressing or thwarting challenges to the values or interests of the decision maker” (Bachrach and Baratz, 1970:43-44).
This may undermine protests and claims for change or leave them un-expressed. Examples include the threat of sanctions (from intimidation to co-optation), or the invocation of an existing bias of the political system (e.g., precedents, rules or procedures) to remove a threatening demand.
This may include manipulative use of meaning and symbols, such as calling opponents ‘backward’, ‘troublemakers’ or ‘terrorists’ (Gaventa, 1980). Other processes of non-decision making may include “decision-less decisions”, a process originating from institutional inaction, and the “rule of anticipation” where less powerful actors decide not to make a demand anticipating further reprisals from the powerful actor (Gaventa, 1980).
The third power form, invisible power, relates to normalising power as in Foucault’s capillary power (1975, 1991), where the internalisation of morals, social norms and ethical standards creates subjects that exercise
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control over themselves and each other. This power is not exercised centrally by the powerful but involves the less powerful:
By shaping their perceptions, cognitions and preferences in such a way that they accept their role in the existing order of things, either because they can see or imagine no alternative to it, or because they see it as natural and unchangeable, or because they value it as divinely ordained and beneficial (Lukes, 2005:28).
While normalising power is often ‘subject-less’, not belonging to any particular actor, but interweaving both dominant and subordinated together in a normalising web that deepens and reinforces the status quo (Foucault, 1975), it may also take ‘agent-centred’ forms. Hereby, dominant groups shape or influence the beliefs and desires of others, securing their compliance (Lukes, 2005), or in foucauldian terms, they engage in governmentality projects by organizing different technologies of power to “conduct the conduct” of the dominated (Foucault, 1991).
Government-rationality produces new forms of knowledge and concepts that “contribute to the ‘government’ of new domains of regulation and intervention; for example, ecosystems and the boundaries between nature and society are rearranged so that “previously untapped areas are being opened in the interests of capitalisation and chances for commercial exploitation” (Lemke, 2001:8).
In addition, Gaventa (2006) argues that Lukes' three forms of power may be understood in relation to how spaces of engagement are created, and the levels at which these forms of power operate (e.g., from local to global). To visualize these appearances of power he links them in the power cube (Figure 5-1). Consequently, forms, spaces and levels of power can be understood as separate but interrelated dimensions.
Levels of power can be defined in various manners, e.g., global/national/local, and spaces are seen as “opportunities, moments and channels where citizens can act to potentially affect policies, discourses, decisions and relationships that affect their lives and interests” (Gaventa 2006:26). Such spaces of participation are not ‘out there’ but socially constructed, their contents and boundaries influenced by power relations (Cornwall 2002 cited by Gaventa, 2005).
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Spaces can be categorised as follows: (i) closed spaces, where boundaries of participation are (intended to be) fixed and decisions are made by groups of actors behind closed doors (Gaventa 2006); (ii) Invited spaces
“into which people (as users, citizens or beneficiaries) are invited to participate by various kinds of authorities, be they government, supranational agencies or non-governmental organizations” (Cornwall 2002 cited by Gaventa, 2006:26); and finally, iii) there are the “spaces which are claimed by less powerful actors from or against the power holders, or created autonomously by them” (Ibid:27).
These spaces are shaped through the diverse outcomes of people’s mobilisations, federations and other meeting opportunities for shared action (e.g., Boelens and Doornbos, 2001; Hoogesteger, 2012).
Forms, levels and spaces of power dynamically interact with and affect each other. Both dominant and subordinated groups often aim to connect different levels of action, work simultaneously through (or open/close) various spaces to foster their interests, and combine diverse forms of power. Their ability to do so shapes the arenas, contents and (fluctuating) outcomes of power struggles in practice.
5.3. A power analysis of the Chamachán watershed PES
This case study is set up as ethnographic research with the communities involved in the Chamachán PES, in Mariano Acosta Parish, Pimampiro Municipality, Ecuador. Fieldwork was carried out throughout the year 2010. Semi-structured interviews and participatory observation were the principal data collection methods, including in total 34 individual interviews with community members, project implementers and environmental service users and non-users. Interviews were held with 11 of the 18 participating private owners in Chamachán, one Municipality professional, one Proderena (an EU funded programme managed by the Ministry of Environment) professional, one Irrigation Board professional, two political leaders from Mariano Acosta and two professionals of AVSF-CICDA (Agronomes et Vétérinaires sans Frontiers), two members of UCICMA (Mariano Acosta Indigenous and Peasants Union). Moreover, 10 members of the Guagalá Association (environmental service providers but not participating in PES) were interviewed during participation in eight community working days. Also interviewed were four non-participating
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members of the Puetaqui and Mariano Acosta villages. In addition, two focus group meetings were organised with the members of the Guagalá association during the lunch break of two minga sessions in which where PES implementation and participation was discussed.
During this research, special focus was put on analysing decision-making concerning the PES project: in which ways were decisions taken (forms of power), who were involved and in what types of arenas (spaces of power) and in which places or echelons of decision-making (levels of power)? The power spaces analysis focused specifically on closed and open spaces to understand top-down dynamics, and on claimed spaces to understand bottom-up dynamics. With respect to levels of power, the analysis took into consideration how PES stems from global-level policies and discourses while being implemented at national and local levels. Additionally, there was analysis of the intersections of forms, spaces and levels of power by identifying how people are affected by the decisions taken.
Regarding information analysis, all interview data were categorised according to the decision-making features of PES. The research analysed the frequency of common answers and contradictions among them, aiming also to scrutinize differences in responses. The validity of the results was tested by presenting them in a feedback workshop organised with the Chamachán and neighbouring communities, NGO members (AVSF-CICDA) and the Imbabura indigenous federation. Feedback was also organised with PES implementing institutes, in two separate meetings with staff from the Proderena programme and Pimampiro municipality.
5.4. The Chamachán watershed PES 5.4.1. Resource struggles in the area
Pimampiro has a total population of 6,300 urban and 11,000 rural inhabitants, distributed over its territory of 44,200 hectares (See also chapter 4). The municipality of Pimampiro spreads over four main watersheds: Escudillas, Blanco, Pisque and Chamachán (Avellaneda and Villafuerte, 2008) (see figure 4-1). The Chamachán micro watershed is located between 1,700 and 3,700 meters above sea level (Guerrero, 2010), with an area of 2,310 hectares, divided into 645 hectares of páramos, and 1,665 of primary and secondary forests. This watershed is
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located in the Mariano Acosta Parish. This large parish (13,400 hectares) has a population of 1,900 (60% self-defined as indigenous Karanki, the rest as mestizos), whose principal livelihood is agriculture (GMP, 2010).
The indigenous communities now inhabiting Mariano Acosta arrived in 1905 from the neighbouring parishes of Angochagua and La Rinconada.
They moved there in search of land that enabled them to escape their status as semi-serfs (huasipungueros) in the neighbouring haciendas.
When they arrived, this land (owned and controlled by Santa Rosa Hacienda) was not being used. Indigenous acquisition cost tough struggles in the highlands and a lengthy court dispute with the hacienda owner. In 1926, the court ruled in favour of the communities. This decision to entitle the land in Mariano Acosta to indigenous families marked the area’s agricultural reactivation – Spanish conquerors had expelled the Chapi indigenous community four centuries earlier (see Theisen and Costales, 1969). However, the court’s decision regarded land only, as water remained under hacienda control. In this respect, the landlord continued to rule the Pimampiro Canal, originally constructed by the Chapi in the 16th Century (Mothes, 1987) to bring water from the Mariano Acosta highlands to the lowlands in the vicinity of Pimampiro’s main urban centre (see figure 5-1).
In 1930, this agricultural development also brought demographic growth.
Migrants from Colombia and northern Ecuador bought land from the indigenous people in forested lands, close to San Nicolás Hacienda, southwest of Pimampiro (Preston, 1990). Until then, agricultural production was very low, compared to cattle herding activities. Most livestock was kept in the páramos, following traditional herding practices.
However, the newcomers’ arrival brought more fields under cultivation in the lower areas of Mariano and therefore the labour force shifted more towards agriculture. The long distance and time requirements meant that most cattle were brought down from the páramos and kept close to residences (Dulong, 2005).
At that time, dominant white-mestizo people regarded the highlands (where indigenous communities lived) as marginal and remote, seeing only the value of timber there. For example, a Colombian businessman who bought Pinandro Hacienda in Pimampiro in 1945 explains in his autobiography, The King of Wood (Restrepo-Jaramillo, 1958), how much of his wealth was achieved by his ingenuity, logging the forgotten
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highlands of Pimampiro where, according to him, the backward indigenous lived. He sold these forests to lay the railroad networks that supported Ecuador’s economic development.
Figure 5-2 PES schemes and water network in Pimampiro (Sketch) Source: Adapted from Dauriac (2005)
In 1946, the owner of Santa Rosa Hacienda, Alonso Tobar, died and the properties were distributed among several interest groups. One part remained under control of the Tobar Family and partially rented to Humberto Román, a Pimampiro entrepreneur with many, varied economic resources. Another part was sold to two rich families who then started what nowadays is the Pimampiro irrigation board (Preston, 1990). Later,
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the neighbouring hacienda, Pinandro (see figure 4-1), was also sold to several white-mestizos who bought the land in order to rent it out. These changes in property ownership oriented production on former hacienda land more towards commercial farming, and drove former hacienda workers searching for newly arable land in the mountainous areas of Pimampiro (Preston, 1990).
Such changes in land tenure and hydraulic infrastructure downstream triggered what Dulong (2005) calls the “race for water titling”. In this race, the Pimampiro water board with the support of the Pimampiro municipality tried to monopolise most highlands water sources in order to provide drinking water for downstream consumption and for intensive agricultural production in the lowlands. Pimampiro municipality brought a lawsuit to appropriate several water source concessions in the Mariano area but, just then, the court ruled in favour of the people of Mariano and Puetaqui. This race for water coincided with droughts in Mariano Acosta, triggering a series of claims from both indigenous and mestizo families requesting redistribution of and access to irrigation water (CESA, 1998).
In 1980, Pimampiro was officially recognised as a municipality, and despite heavy resistance by the people of Mariano Acosta, Mariano was annexed to the new municipality (CESA, 1998). Soon thereafter, Pimampiro acquired via CNRH (National Water Resources Board) three water concessions in Puetaqui and several others in the upper part of Chamachán for drinking and irrigation water, without prior consent from the communities upstream. In this way, via the State administration, they won the titles that they failed to get via the court (Dulong, 2005). Now with political control over Mariano Acosta, in 1990, Pimampiro started building the Nueva América Canal, to transfer water from the Pisque River to the Pimampiro Canal. The idea was to use this new concession from the Pisque River to supply 24-hour drinking water in Pimampiro. However, it was soon detected that the Pisque’s water was not suitable for human consumption “as it has very high mineral contents” (EMAPA-P professional, pers. comm., June 2010). Therefore, the municipal water company decided to swap their Pisque River water concession with the Irrigation Board in exchange for use of water from the Chamachán River for drinking water supply (Dauriac, 2005) (see figure 4-1 and 5-2).
This also gave rise to the first PES scheme in the area, described in chapter 4, the Nueva America PES project (Wunder and Alban 2008). The
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Nueva America PES project (see chapter 4), which was implemented in Mariano Acosta between 2001 and 2002 to improve water supply to Pimampiro, by paying PES participants in Nueva América a compensation of up to one dollar per hectare per month for protecting woodlands and páramos along the Palaurco River (Wunder and Alban 2008). Ironically, because of the swap in concessions, Pimampiro inhabitants pay Nueva America upstream farmers for environmental services, the farmers must conserve their forests for this purpose, but the water conserved does not go to these Pimampiro drinking water users, but to the Irrigation Board farmers. At the same time, drinking water in Pimampiro originates in another, hydrologically separate, watershed: Chamachán. Service providers here, however, are not paid by Pimampiro water users (who use the environmental services) because the latter are already paying Nueva América for the services. As such examples reveal, PES reality is Kafkaesque, and theory and practice tend to diverge profoundly.
In sum, the backdrop of these PES projects is shaped by a long history of
In sum, the backdrop of these PES projects is shaped by a long history of